Image: Songwriter Justin "JT" Mohrle has the best take on Luka Doncic's trade.
Songwriter Justin "JT" Mohrle has the best take on Luka Doncic's trade.
Brad Frace
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The dust has settled on Luka Doncic’s shocking overnight trade from the Dallas Mavericks to the LA Lakers last month. Loyal fans and the entire NBA were left reeling in reaction to the Slovenian franchise player’s surprise hand-off by management in exchange for power forward Anthony Davis. But in Dallas, the upset still sits heavy in the air, and morale is low.
This city is still rumbling with the aftershocks in a strange new world, from business losses to emotional wounds.
We’ve seen and heard just about every different perspective on the event from devastated fans, devil’s advocate sports columnists, and TV’s desk-yelling commentary crew alike. In mourning Luka, Dallasites have a lot of content to draw on to process the business, sentimental and political arguments, and the daunting precedent set for what’s to come under new and unpopular majority owners of the team. But there’s only one thing we’ve seen on the internet examining the event from a deeper cultural standpoint, and it’s actually pretty brilliant.
The best take on this whole debacle is a 20-minute video essay called LUCKY SEVENS (as in Luka’s jersey number, 77). It is an open letter to team management and an effusive tribute to Dallas. Recently uploaded to a new YouTube channel by homegrown rapper and Grammy-winning industry songwriter Justin “JT” Mohrle (known professionally as Justus), it is an open letter to team management and an effusive tribute to Dallas.
LUCKY SEVENS is more than your typical sports editorial. JT uses a wide-focus lens to break down the Mavs and the Luka trade and proposes socio-cultural, existential questions that every Dallasite should ask themselves, whether they are sports fans or not. It’s a phenomenological look at the team referencing historical Dallas, comparative mythology (Joseph Campbell’s hero’s journey and ancient Greek symbolism) and some of the city’s most noble core values. Mohrle supports his thesis on why we all care so much, down to the meaning and etymology of the word “maverick” itself.
JT’s down-to-earth narration grounds his use of academic theory in unpretentious and easy-to-grasp terms. It’s intellectual but accessible, skillfully referential but not pretentious. It’s especially entertaining framed within footage of the Dirk Nowitzki era, Luka’s best Mavericks game highlights and even an obscure cartoon from the early '90s called Pegasus, The Flying Horse. This is elevated sports journalism, a unique perspective of what basketball really means in a greater cultural context.
“To us, Nico, a Maverick’s not a horse logo,” says Mohrle, directly addressing General Manager Nico Harrison, possibly the most hated man in the City of Hate right now.
“Nor is it an entertainment business. It’s our symbol of defiance against the odds.” he says
“On February 2nd, [2025] you cemented a decision that will permanently alter the way we receive the phrase, ‘Loyalty Never Fades Away,” JT declares, invoking both the inscription on Dirk Nowitzski’s statue in Victory Park and his argument that loyalty is one of Dallas’ most important core values.
Acknowledging that basketball is indeed a business, JT still has something to say to Miriam Adelson, the richer-than-sin casino magnate and political power-donor who purchased Mark Cuban’s majority ownership stake in the Dallas Mavericks for $3.5 billion in 2023 with her son-in-law Patrick Dumont.
“I think the Mavericks are nothing more than a business transaction to you,” he says, “They represent more than that to us. They’re fond memories, and community, and joy, and emotional investment. (...) So what are you loyal to if it’s not the consumers of your product? Is it money? Adulation?”
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Justus has resettled in Dallas after a decade of living and working in Los Angeles.
As he says in the video, Mohrle is a fourth generation Dallas native. What he doesn’t say in the video is that he was a big part of the Deep Ellum rap scene that formed in 2010, revolving around the long-closed very small room venue called 2826 Arnetic (now home to gastropub Nowhere Deep Ellum).
In just a couple of years, the resulting talents honed on that Elm Street stage led local acts like A.Dd+ and Brain Gang (the latter of which featured JT and his lyrical rap prowess) to sell out crowds at the Granada Theater.
Soon after being discovered by Dallas rap cult hero The D.O.C., JT launched his songwriting career when rap icon Dr. Dre called him to the West Coast in 2015. Mohrle moved to LA and stayed there for the next 10 years, grinding in the studio and earning credits on albums such as Dre’s Compton (inspired by the NWA biopic Straight Outta Compton) and Foster The People’s Sacred Hearts Club.
Now he’s returned home to Dallas with a Grammy and a gold record to show for it, gearing up to debut a massive multimedia project this year. Justus is a hell of a songwriter, but hopefully he continues to expand his pen game into more sports and cultural commentary.